


pretty things

by CallicoKitten



Series: whatever our souls are made of [3]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemon, Backstory, Daemons, Eve is a bamfy spy, F/M, Gen, Pre-Canon, and this makes little sense, idk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 09:56:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallicoKitten/pseuds/CallicoKitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some cultures, Eve has learnt, in which it is perfectly acceptable for people to touch each other’s daemons. It’s the first times she’s glad of Mossad’s form.</p><p>When he settles, jewel bright and dangerous, she’s fourteen. Her parents smile nervously, her school friends avoid her. She quickly finds a name for his form, a tarantula hawk and God he is beautiful, but people flinch away when he buzzes close or people coo and say “What a pretty daemon.” And that’s the thing: Eve can’t decide whether she doesn’t like his form because it makes her look too dangerous or not dangerous enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pretty things

**Author's Note:**

> You guys, wow! 
> 
> The feedback on this series has been awesome and this, i'm afraid, isn't the most well written piece. Eve starts in MI5 because I was watching Spooks and you can literally apply on the website.
> 
> Also, liberties taken with Eve's character because she's obv different from novel-version!Moneypenny.
> 
> I'm working on Gareth Mallory's one next, maybe Silva's after? I have ideas kicking around for a full length fic but I don't know if it'll happen (since I have like 574758947984 fics on going and blah) but anyway, enjoy!
> 
> Unbeta'd

There are some cultures, Eve has learnt, in which it is perfectly acceptable for people to touch each other's daemons. It's the first times she's glad of Mossad's form.

When he settles, jewel bright and dangerous, she's fourteen. Her parents smile nervously, her school friends avoid her. She quickly finds a name for his form, a tarantula hawk and _God_ he is beautiful, but people flinch away when he buzzes close or people coo and say "What a pretty daemon." And that's the thing: Eve can't decide whether she doesn't like his form because it makes her look too dangerous or not dangerous enough.

* * *

When they were young Mossad always favoured pretty forms; brightly coloured birds and snakes, delicate little cats with patterned fur of a million different colours and hues, jewel coloured butterflies, dragonflies, mantises.

The other girls thought she was weird but she never much cared what people thought. Their daemons mostly stuck to small mammals, rodents, cats, dogs, occasionally birds and butterflies. Never anything too dangerous. Never anything that might raise questions.

Mossad is different. He likes to take dangerous forms.

Tarantulas and scorpions and all manner of poisonous beasts.

Eve rather loves him for it.

There was never anything she loved more than Mossad skittering across the desk in some ghastly form while the rest of her school mates squealed and sprang away.

* * *

She joins MI5, right out of university.

It's been a running joke with her and her dormmates, Eve Moneypenny, the girl with secret agent name. There's no real reason for it, she doesn't particularly have a drive towards becoming a spy, it's just something to do. She never really intended to be good at it.

She studied Art-History at uni, mostly to annoy her parents who wanted her to be a doctor or a lawyer. God knows she had the brains, had the talent but she never had an interest in doing something so mundane, they should have known that from her daemons form. Working at Five is easy at first, there's not much travelling involved and her legends are fairly easy to keep track of, the agents she works with easy to get on with.

It's easy; it's fun, it's _exciting,_ until she sees her first death.

She's undercover in an eco-terrorist cell, they're planning to sabotage a power plant in the midlands, her name today is Mary Salinger, Mossad's name is Fenn. She contacts her handler as soon as she knows there's no way she's talking the group down from blowing up the plant and the police are there in a matter of minutes.

A member of the terror cell gets shot. Her name had been Felicity Arkwright, her daemon was small rooster named Kian. Kian vanishes in to a cloud of golden dust and for a moment the whole world stands still.

She didn't know Felicity well (well, she knew _about_ her, that was her job – she knew Felicity had a little sister who worshipped her and studied history at Essex university and that she went to ballet until she was fourteen) Now they're just meaningless pieces of trivia and she wonders if the kids in her ballet class ever think of Felicity, or whether she ever thinks of them. She wonders what her little sister will think when she learns about her death. She wonders what would have happened if the bullet hit just an inch to the right.

Mossad buzzes in her ear as she sits in the car afterwards, "There was nothing you could have done." He says softly. "She died for what she believed in."

Eve nods. She knows that the same way she knows that Felicity drove an Audi and had a pet cat named Callie. She strokes Mossad's wings delicately and wonders what will happen to the poor cat.

Her handler, a stoic man named Tom with a husky daemon pats her awkwardly on the shoulder, "It's part of the job," he says.

_Part of the job._

* * *

The thing she loves most about Mossad's form is how unreadable he is and how unreadable that makes her.

Interrogations are always fun.

You can tell a lot about a person by the way their daemon acts, it's much harder when your captive's daemon is a buzzing insect.

* * *

Her parents died when she was fifteen years old. It wasn't anything spectacular, a car accident a few roads away from their home.

Eve actually walked past the cordoned off crash site on her way home from school.

At their funeral she plays the part of grieving daughter and Mossad hides under her collar but truth be told she never really knew her parents. They were moneyed enough to hire a nanny for her and she's fairly sure they only had a child for appearance sake.

It used to make her angry that they went and died before she had a chance to rub their faces in how awesome she turned out without their help.

When she turns sixteen she changes her name, she doesn't want to ride through life on her parent's success (she never has) She picks the most ridiculous name she can think of because she can and relishes the thought of her parents rolling in their graves.

* * *

The first time she kills someone she's on loan from 5 at 6.

They're working to prevent a Chechen group from releasing a deadly nerve agent in Moscow and London. The agents with her from 5 are bickering with the agents from 6 like children, it's ridiculous really. Mossad is flitting between the snarling daemons, sniggering and Eve would find it funny too if there wasn't an immediate terror threat.

That's when M strides in and Eve has never felt power like that.

She doesn't even speak, just pauses in the centre of the room, clears her throat and glances around in distain. It's like lightning, the agents and their daemons fall silent and turn to her.

Under M's command they manage to prevent the release of the gas but not before Eve plants a bullet between the eyes of a young terrorist, his hawk daemon vanishing with a startled caw.

It doesn't even really hit her until afterwards, when she's back in Thames House. She _killed_ someone.

 _She_ killed someone.

It's a strange thing because nothing has changed but _everything_ has changed. Her legs quake, her stomach churns and her fingers tremble. She doesn't even know the terrorists name. She wonders if that would make it easier. Probably not.

She's standing outside, gazing down at the river when M approaches her, flanked as always by two armed men.

"Agent Moneypenny, is it?" she says and Eve turns to her, she's not sure if she can her distain in M's voice or if she's just imagining it. M extends a hand.

"Yes?"

When Eve accepts M's hand her's isn't shaking.

M eyes her, "That's an interesting daemon. A tarantula hawk, female form but you daemon is male, correct?"

Eve nods.

"You're a good agent, Miss Moneypenny. I enjoyed working with you. Have you ever considered transferring?"

Eve smiles weakly, "Well, I've always wanted to travel."

* * *

The first time she goes undercover she's put in an extreme terrorist group where daemon touching is acceptable.

It makes her feel sick.

But maybe it shouldn't, she's heard that lovers touch each other's daemons sometimes but Eve doesn't really _do_ lovers. Luckily even the most senior terrorists avoid Mossad.

It's around this time she decides she doesn't much like field work.

* * *

Mossad's always been quiet.

In fact she can count on one hand the times he's initiated conversation with other people's daemons and he talks to her only when he thinks no one else is listening.

He talks to Dahy though.

_A lot._

She and Q have an interesting relationship. She's sent to bring him in (after 5 and 6 war over who should get him) and she likes him immediately. She likes the way she can see the gears in his head turning as he surveys everything around him (and that fact that he's around her age is a bonus too, most of the agents at 6 have been there forever, the new recruits keep dying.)

They fall in to an easy friendship which mostly involves drinking and pretending they're more normal then they actually are.

She thinks she might be a little in love with him but no like _that_.

She thinks he might feel the same way.

* * *

Mossad is small and beautiful and dangerous, just like her.

Mossad is small and delicate and breakable, just like her.

* * *

James Bond is the first double-oh agent she meets.

She's not surprised in the slightest by his panting dog daemon. If anything she expected her to be a more British dog, a bulldog or a King Charles (Mossad snorts at that thought.) He's the kind of spy people wrote about in the sixties, suave and cool and apparently completely devoid of emotions. A man's man to the core.

But there is something else too him; she sees it in the way he sometimes loses himself in gazing out of the window or watching people in the street.

The story goes that Bond fell in love with the wrong woman. The story goes that his childhood was a sad story. Eve knows this because she's seen his file, seen the notes about childhood trauma and Vesper Lynd and alcohol dependency. As agents go his back story is rather bland but Eve's been told that's not how these things work.

* * *

"Take the shot," M's voice buzzes in her ear.

Since that Chechen agent in London all those years ago Eve's killed a hundred men, she's heard daemons howl and vanish and cry. She's seen agents die, friends, colleagues (almost everyone she worked with at 5 is dead and gone.)

Death is nothing new anymore.

It's business as usual.

Mossad tenses on her shoulder.

Eve's hand doesn't shake.

As Bond falls she thinks she hears Shylah howl (but Shylah is back at the safe house) her mind goes blank.

"It wasn't your fault," Mossad says when they get back to the empty safe house.

Eve knows that logically it wasn't, she had a chance to prevent the deaths of hundreds of undercover agents and she took it. She thinks even James would forgive her with that logic.

But she _failed._

And now hundreds of agents are in jeopardy.

"There's nothing you could have done." Mossad buzzes.

And he's right but that doesn't make it hurt any less.

"Maybe he's not dead." Her daemon suggests.

"He would be back by now," she says moodily.

Mossad sighs, "Would he? If you got a chance to walk away from all this, no grudges, no missions?"

Eve considers it, "That sounds awfully dull."

* * *

"I heard you shot James Bond," Q says conversationally (he's just been promoted). It's the first time Eve's seen him since Turkey, she's been busy with paperwork – killing agents is a bureaucratic nightmare and then there were the loose ends, then the bomb and the old Q's death.

Dahy winds himself around Q's legs, Mossad buzzes down to perch on the cat's nose.

"Hm. Not on purpose," she says, stirring her tea.

Q makes an understanding sound, she shots him a quick grin to let him know that she _does not_ need comforting and she's completely fine, thank you very much. He grins, "Shame, that. I'd quite like to meet him."

"Maybe you will one day."

If anyone can come back from _that_ it's James Bond.

* * *

It's Tanner who tells her double-oh-seven's back.

She doesn't believe him until she sees Shylah loping after Tanner's yorkie. Mossad spends the rest of the day resting on Shylah's nose; Eve listens to the gentle hum of their conversation through their bond and smiles.

* * *

She doesn't know if she's in love with Bond.

He blurs the line between wanting to be _with_ himand wanting to _be_ him.

As she presses the cut-throat to his skin she thinks about how easy it would be to press down, send him back to the land of the dead. She sees something flicker across her light eyes, feels his pulse jump under the blade. He licks his lips.

She could drown in him.

If she leant down to kiss him he'd kiss her back.

She knows if she does that she'll never turn back. Maybe it would be a wonderful, passionate romance but she knows it would end with one of them dead and the other left heartbroken.

Eve's heard that heartbreak doesn't do much for an agent's morale.

She leans away and maybe, just maybe, there's a flicker of disappointment in Bond's blue eyes.

* * *

She takes a desk job because her hands have started shaking when she points a gun.

She takes a desk job because Gareth Mallory is going to need all the help he can get.

She takes a desk job because when Bond suggests it Mossad whispers, "He's right, you know," and Mossad is never wrong.

She takes a desk job because she'll be the best secretary MI6 has ever seen.

* * *

Bond is back on active duty and Q is moping.

"Do you love him?" she asks, sipping the overpriced champagne he's bought.

Q reddens and Dahy sniggers. "No." He says.

Eve smirks; better him than her.


End file.
